Shinto

On Sunday, I watched an “online talk session” about kagura (sacred dance) organised by Shin’yūsha. I have mentioned Shin’yūsha before — it is a group that organises sessions about traditional Japanese culture, primarily aimed at children, but with a broader focus now. Before the pandemic, my daughter and I went to quite a few of the sessions, which were practical opportunities to experience some thing, but since the pandemic started they have moved most of the sessions online, and my daughter has become a teenager, and less interested in doing… Read More »Shin’yūsha on Kagura

When the law was passed to depose the previous Tennō (allow him to abdicate), an appendix was added requiring the government to look, as a matter of urgency, into the problem of the Imperial succession — the problem being that there is only one male member of the Imperial family under the age of fifty, and the law limits succession to men in the male line. The plan was to start looking into this when all the rituals associated with the succession had finished, but they got pushed back a… Read More »Expert Committee on the Imperial Succession

I have written three posts about the natsumoude events at Asakusa Jinja, but I haven’t said which the kami of the jinja are. Asakusa Jinja enshrines Haji-no-Manakachi-no-Mikoto, Hinokuma-no-Hamanari-no-Mikoto, and Hinokuma-no-Takënari-no-Mikoto. Because it enshrines three kami, it is also known as “Sanja-sama”, which means “Honourable Three Jinja”, and some variant of “Sanja” was its official name for most of its history. It is still the name of the largest matsuri associated with the jinja. You have probably not heard of these kami. This is because they are not, to the best… Read More »Kami of Asakusa

While I was volunteering at Asakusa Jinja’s natsumoude, on July 7th, the jinja held a special ceremony, or “shinji”, to symbolically clean and purify the well in the jinja precincts. This was called the “Ido Arai Shinji”, or “Well-Washing Ceremony”. This was listed in the program for natsumoude, which we were handing out, and was announced several times over the PA system in the jinja, but even so not many people went to see it. (It was at 2pm on a weekday, but there were quite a lot of people… Read More »Well-Washing Ceremony

“O-Sanpo Mairi” means “visiting a jinja while taking a casual stroll”. An “o-sanpo” is a walk with no particular purpose, and so the whole phrase suggests visiting a jinja without any strong purpose, just as something pleasant to do. As this is basically what I do every day, I am in favour of the concept. “O-Sanpo Mairi” is also the title of a campaign organised by one jinja in Tokyo, Irugi Jinja in Shinagawa. The jinja emphasises that going for a walk is a safe way to get out and… Read More »O-Sanpo Mairi

How many Inari jinja are there in Japan? Tl;dr: 3,000 and 30,000 and 300,000 are all possible answers, depending on what you count as an “Inari jinja”. It is very common to see the claim that there are more Inari jinja than any other single kind, both in English and in Japanese, and there are various specific claims about the number. For example, Fushimi Inari Taisha, the original Inari jinja in Kyoto, says on their website that “There are said to be about 30,000”. You might think that they would… Read More »How Many Inari Jinja?